


College Admissions

by eternaleponine



Series: Ghosts That We Knew [16]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Deleted Scene, Gen, Mention of Past Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1503317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce gets a letter from MIT, which leads to a conversation that Tony and Bruce have avoided for too long.</p>
            </blockquote>





	College Admissions

Bruce opened the door of his room (he'd finally gotten used to thinking of it as his room, even if he still wasn't entirely used to the idea of Tony's home being his home) and stumbled back a step as he found himself literally face to face with his best friend.

"Good," Tony said. "You're awake."

"Of course I'm awake," Bruce said. "It's almost noon."

"We're teenagers," Tony said. "You never know."

It was ironic, coming from Tony. Bruce wasn't sure that he ever slept. He certainly didn't keep any kind of regular sleep schedule. More than once he'd heard him up puttering around at three in the morning, even though they had to be up and getting ready for school at six. He'd finally gotten a white noise app that he could use to try and drown out the sounds of his eternal wakefulness (it was amazing how much noise a person made simply be existing), because he needed sleep, and plenty of it. If he didn't get enough, his temper might get the best of him, and...

Well, he couldn't let that happen.

"What is it?" Bruce asked, because Tony was jittering, his weight shifting from one foot to the other while his hands remained behind his back, like he was doing some sort of strange jig. 

"I have something for you," Tony said. "It just came in the mail. Guess what it is?"

Bruce didn't need to guess. There was only one piece of mail that would excite Tony this much... and Bruce wasn't sure he was ready to receive it yet. But ready or not, it was here. "My letter from MIT," he said, trying to muster more enthusiasm than he felt.

It wasn't that he didn't want to go to MIT. He did. It was a good school – a _great_ school – and he'd enjoyed the time he spent there last summer. Tony had applied early admission and gotten in, surprising no one since he was brilliant and also a Stark, and what school wasn't going to pass up the possibility of a future benefactor with that kind of money? He'd tried to convince Bruce to do the same, but he hadn't. He'd told Tony he wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment.

What he hadn't told Tony was that MIT wasn't the only school he'd applied to. His friend had to know; it stood to reason, after all, that he would apply to more than one place if he wasn't doing early admission, but he'd made sure that everything for the other schools went to his grandparents' house rather than here so that Tony never saw it.

"So what does it say?" he asked. He honestly wasn't sure what he wanted it to say. If they rejected him, the decision would be out of his hands, and maybe that would be better, because then he would just have to choose between his other options, and he wouldn't have to deal with Tony's disappointment... or at least it wouldn't be his fault that they wouldn't be the two musketeers anymore. (Could you have just two musketeers? There were four of them in the story, even though it was called The Three Musketeers.) 

"I don't know," Tony said, offended or at least pretending to be. "I didn't open it. I didn't want to take away your moment of glory."

"I might not have gotten in," Bruce pointed out. "They could say no."

"They didn't," Tony said. "I mean, they won't." He shoved the envelope into Bruce's hands. "Open it."

Bruce inspected it, tracing his fingers over the edges of the flap that sealed it shut, looking for signs of tampering, but unless Tony had done a really good job of hiding it, he actually hadn't snooped, and his confidence in the outcome was just a slip of the tongue. 

It felt too thin to be a yes, though. If you got in, weren't you supposed to get a big packet with all kinds of information about tuition and financial aid and housing and all of that? Thin envelopes meant one sheet of paper, one "We regret to inform you..."

"Come on," Tony said. "You're killing me!" He reached for the letter, snatching it from Bruce's hands, and tore it open, extracting the letter inside and holding it out to Bruce again. "Just read it!"

Bruce took it, unfolded the paper, scanned its contents for the inevitable letdown. "Dear Bruce," he read, out loud because he knew if he didn't Tony would take it away again, "Congra—"

But he didn't even get to finish the word, because Tony nearly tackled him, not needing to hear any more to know that things had gone exactly the way he'd planned them. 

"I told you!" Tony said. "I told you you would get in! There was no way that they would reject you. Not after you did the summer program and not with your grades and—"

"Okay," Bruce said. "Okay." He managed to extricate his arm from where Tony had crushed it against his side so that he could finish reading the letter. It didn't actually say much more, except that he could expect another packet of information shortly, including his financial aid offer. "This doesn't really mean anything," he pointed out to Tony. "It doesn't mean I can go."

Tony frowned. "What are you talking about? Of course you can go. And you will! Where else would you go?" It has always been a foregone conclusion for Tony, that they would go to school together, probably share a room, be best friends forever. 

Bruce didn't know how to tell him that the future wasn't all that certain. "I still don't know what I'm getting for financial aid. If it's not enough, I won't—"

"If it's not enough, I'll—"

"No!" The word came out sharp enough that it actually stopped Tony in his tracks, his mouth hanging open. "No, you won't. Stark Industries or Stark Foundation or Stark Whatever Else There Might Be isn't going to pick up the tab. That's not how it works. It's fine that you've got money, Tony, and I appreciate the fact that you're willing to help me out, but... I need to be able to do this on my own. Or at least to be able to do it without feeling like I owe you."

Tony frowned, looking away from Bruce and flopping down on his bed. "You wouldn't owe me anything," he said. "That's what scholarships are about. Getting money and not owing anything. That's the whole point."

"But if the fact that I'm your friend is what got me the scholarship in the first place, it's basically the same thing as owing you. It would be one thing if I applied like anyone else and I got it based on whatever criteria they set out, but... I would never trust that that was the case. I would always think that you'd intervened somehow, to make sure that I got what I wanted... and that you got what you wanted."

"I wouldn't—" Tony started, but Bruce didn't even need to interrupt him. "Okay, I would," he admitted. "But it'd be because you deserved it. I mean..." For once he seemed to be at a loss for words. "You need a chance, and I can give you that chance and I just don't understand what's wrong with wanting to do that."

"Nothing's wrong with it," Bruce said. "But... sometimes I think it's not really about _me_. I feel like... you're doing it for you. Because it's what you want."

He hadn't actually ever meant to say those words out loud... or at least not when there was a chance that it would mean that Tony might get upset, offended, and decide that maybe Bruce wasn't so great a friend anymore, that maybe he'd overstayed his welcome. Because as selfish as Tony could be, Bruce knew that he could be, too. 

But did it still count as selfishness when he was doing it to try to maintain his sanity? When it was about preserving his own safety? 

He could see the hurt in Tony's face, but also that he didn't really understand it. Bruce didn't really want to explain, didn't want to have to try, but he couldn't just leave things hanging like that. He couldn't _not_ explain, not now. 

And he would be all right for a few months at his grandparents' if he had to be.

"I just... what if I decided that I didn't want to go to MIT?" Bruce asked. "What if I decided I wanted to go somewhere else?"

"Well, that would be kind of a problem," Tony said, "since you didn't apply anywhere else."

"I did," Bruce said. "I didn't tell you because I knew you were dead set on us both going there, and it's probably my first choice as long as everything else works out, but... it's not my only choice. There was a chance that they could say no, and I just... had to have a backup plan. So I applied to a couple of other places, and I got one letter from my last choice – I got in there – and I'm still waiting to hear back from the others, but... MIT isn't my only choice." 

"Oh." Tony shrugged. "Well, I guess that was a good idea, yeah. On the off chance that they didn't let you in. Which they did, so now it doesn't matter."

"Unless they don't offer me enough financial aid, and I can't afford it," Bruce said. 

"That's not going to happen," Tony said. 

"You don't know that," Bruce said, but then he had to wonder if maybe Tony did know that somehow, if maybe even this acceptance letter wasn't entirely based on his own merits, if somehow his friend had intervened on his behalf. That was the trouble with having Tony Stark for a friend; you could never been sure just how far and deep his influence ran, or his father's, really, and whether he'd decided to start getting involved to make sure that things happened exactly the way he wanted them to.

Something must have shown on his face, because Tony's expression suddenly changed, going far more serious than Bruce had ever seen him. "What?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"You didn't..." Bruce held out the letter. "You didn't have anything to do with this, did you? You didn't have your dad...?"

"What? No!" 

Tony was a lot of things, but a good liar wasn't one of them. Bruce studied his face, searching for any hint of deception, but found none. He seemed genuinely surprised by the accusation. "And you're not going to?"

At that, Tony squirmed. "He doesn't actually have that much influence at MIT," he said. "I... I mean I'm sure he knows people or knows people who know people, and there's always his reputation, but... I don't think he's got that many strings to pull there." He shrugged. "That's one of the reasons I wanted to go there. Because it wasn't already his."

Bruce let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. "Okay," he said. "Good."

"But if they don't offer you enough, there are always other scholarships. Even through the Stark Foundation, and I swear I wouldn't do anything to try and make sure that you got one if you didn't want me to." 

Bruce wasn't sure he was telling the truth on that one, but at least it was something. But really, there was a deeper question that he wasn't asking, hadn't been asking the entire time they'd been going through the admissions process, and he probably needed to because if he didn't do it now, he might never do it, and then he would always wonder. "Tony?"

His friend looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "Yeah?"

"Why does it matter?" he asked. "Why does it matter so much to you where I go to school? MIT's not the only great school out there."

"I know," Tony said, "but it's one of the best, and it's where I'm going."

Which didn't answer the question at all, and Bruce was pretty sure that it was an intentional evasion. "Right, but just because you're going there doesn't mean I have to."

"Don't you want to?" Tony asked. 

"Maybe," Bruce said. "But why do you care?"

"Because you're my friend," Tony said. "You're my best friend, and why wouldn't I want you to be at the same school that I am? If you're there, at least I'll have a roommate that I know I can live with, and—"

"We wouldn't be roommates," Bruce said, gently but firmly. "No way."

Tony looked like Bruce had slapped him. "Why not?"

"Because you would drive me crazy," he replied. "Because if I actually had to share a room with you, we wouldn't be friends for very long. A house is one thing, and maybe we could live next door or down the hall or something, but not in the same room. I need to sleep, and you never do, and... it just wouldn't be good."

"Oh." Tony seemed to shrink into himself a little, and Bruce almost regretted what he'd said, but it was the truth and it was going to have to come out eventually. "Okay, well... so at least I would have someone living nearby that I know I got along with, and..." But some of the wind had been taken from his sails, and he didn't seem to quite know how to continue.

"And?" Bruce prompted.

"Why is it so strange for me to want my best friend to go to school with me?" Tony asked, trying to turn it back around on Bruce. "You're making this into a much bigger deal than it really is."

"You're the one who's made it a big deal," Bruce said. "Ever since you got your acceptance back in December, you haven't stopped talking about how I needed to do my application and how I should put this thing or that thing on it to make it look good, and how—"

"Not since I got my acceptance," Tony said, but his voice was almost too quiet to be heard. "I talked about it then, yeah, but... it wasn't as important than. It would have been good, but... it wasn't since then."

"It was," Bruce said. "You got it right around Christmas break, right before, actually, and—"

And then he realized. Then it sunk in. It _hadn't_ been immediately following when he'd gotten his letter. It had been after Christmas, after Christmas break, when they'd gone back to school and Tony couldn't keep an eye on him every minute of every day, that he'd started to go just a little bit crazy about the idea that they needed to both go to MIT. "Oh."

"Yeah." Tony stared at the comforter that draped Bruce's bed, neatly made like he did every morning out of habit. Somehow he managed to find a stray thread to fidget with. 

They hadn't really talked about it. Even when Bruce had still been in the hospital, and Tony had basically refused to leave his side except when he was absolutely forced to, they hadn't talked about what had happened. Tony had talked about everything else under the sun, including MIT, and Bruce had let the words wash over him, nodding and saying, 'Yeah' a lot when it seemed appropriate, figuring that the seemingly endless stream of words was just Tony's way of coping, and that he would eventually get over it.

Apparently he still wasn't over it.

"It's... that's..." Bruce didn't really know what to say. "Even if we're not together... we would – _I_ would – still be okay, Tony. Really."

"How do you know?" Tony asked, still not looking at him. "How do you know that you wouldn't end up with some roommate who drove you crazy, or some professor who was too hard on you or some girl who broke your heart or... or something, anything, that would just make you..." He shrugged.

"I probably will end up with a roommate that makes me crazy, and a professor that's too hard on me, and maybe someone will break my heart, but that's just life, Tony. That's not... it's not going to..." He couldn't say the word. Neither of them could say the word, and how were they supposed to talk about it, clear the air, when neither of them could say the word?

Bruce took a breath, let it out slowly. "It wasn't about anything like that," he said. "It was my father. It was the fact that my father was trying to take me away from everything and everyone. It was... I felt trapped, and like there was no hope of getting out of it, and I just... I know it's hard for you to understand, but people get low. People get—"

Tony looked up finally. "You think that's hard for me to understand?" he asked. "You think I don't 'get low'? You think I don't have feelings, too? You think I don't feel trapped and like there's no escape sometimes? That doesn't mean I would ever try to just... _end_ everything." 

Bruce didn't ask what could possibly make Tony feel trapped and hopeless. From where he stood, his friend's life seemed pretty damn good. Except his dad was never really around, but Tony was still expected to be a Stark, not do anything that might dishonor the family name, all of that. He had to live up to the expectations of a family and father that were largely absent from his life, and when he was old enough, he would be expected to take it over, run it all, whether it was what he wanted or not.

Except as far as Bruce could tell, it _was_ what Tony wanted, or at least Tony was interested in the things that the company did, and so really, what kind of hardship was it for him? 

"I know," he said finally. "Everyone does. And what I did was stupid. I know that. Which is why it's not going to happen again. Even if I'm thousands of miles away, and you're not there to check in every hour, on the hour, it's still not going to happen. I'm... past that now."

"But what if you weren't?" Tony asked. "What if something happened and you started feeling like that again, and no one was there to stop you? No one was there to wonder where you were, why you hadn't shown up to meet them, why you weren't picking up your phone. What if you did something and no one was there to find you before it was too late? What then?"

"It's..." Bruce closed his eyes, opened them again, went and sat next to Tony and put his hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said. He wasn't sure he ever had before. Not directly, not specifically to Tony. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that to you, and I'm sorry that you were the one who found me... that you had to see that, that you had to deal with that. But... I'm glad that you did. Find me, I mean. In time. I'm glad that I didn't actually die. I... yeah. I'm sorry, Tony. It was a stupid thing, and a selfish thing, and I didn't think... I thought, at the time, that you would get over it, that you would be better off without me to drag you down, but... I know that's not how it is. I know that everything going on in my head then was just... it was my dad talking, mostly, his voice, everything he ever said, did, everything he ever seemed to feel about me just going around and around and... I started to believe it. I started to think I was a waste of space, a waste of life. It was a really bad time, a really bad moment, and I made a mistake, Tony, but you saved me, and I swear, I _swear_ it won't happen again." He was gripping Tony's hand along with his shoulder and he didn't even remember having taken it. His knuckles were white and he loosened his hold slightly, afraid he might have hurt his friend.

Tony looked at him, and Bruce couldn't read his face. It looked like he had tasted something sour, or like he'd bit his tongue and didn't want to let on how much it hurt or something. He opened his mouth, closed it again, several times before any words came out. "But how do I know?" he asked finally. "How do I know you mean that? How do I know you're not lying? How do I _know_?"

"Have I ever lied to you?" Bruce asked. 

"Of course you have," Tony said. "Everyone lies. Everyone lies all the time. Someone asks how you are and you lie, because everyone always says that they're fine and how often is anyone actually fine? Pretty much never. It's what we're trained to do. Don't make ourselves inconvenient. Don't force anyone else to deal with our problems, our emotions. Keep it all inside, because you don't want to be a burden to anyone. It's what people _do_ , Bruce. I mean... what happened, that stuff doesn't just happen all at once. You don't just suddenly wake up one day and say, 'I'm going to kill myself today.' It happens over the course of days, weeks... months, maybe. Years. You don't just snap. Maybe you snap and kill someone _else_ , and who could blame you if you'd gone after your dad? But suicide isn't a crime of passion. That's not how it works. So for however long, any time anyone asked you how you were, if anything was wrong, you lied. You lied and lied and lied and finally I got tired of lies and decided to call your bluff and found you half – three quarters – dead on the floor. And it felt like it came out of nowhere because you'd built up a wall of lies, encased yourself in an armor of lies, even to me who is supposed to be your best friend, and... how can I trust you now? How can I trust you when I know that you can lie so well that I don't know I'm being lied to until it's almost too late? How, if I can't look you in the eye, check on where you are, what you're doing... how, if I can't actually _see_ you, can I ever be sure that you're not just telling me more lies and then suddenly it'll be your grandparents on the phone if they even know to bother, calling me and saying that you're gone, dead, and this time I wasn't there to stop it?"

Bruce swallowed, let go of Tony's shoulder so he could brush the tears from first his own cheeks, then Tony's. He expected his friend to flinch away from the touch, to push him away, but he didn't. Because the walls had come tumbling down for both of them, and they were past the point of lies, and there was no hiding now. 

"If - _if_ \- I end up going somewhere else," he said, forcing the words out around the lump in his throat, "I'll call you every day. And if things aren't good, I'll tell you. I'll... see about seeing a counselor if things are feeling bad. I promise. And a couple of the places I applied are in the Boston area, so even if I'm not at MIT I'll still be close. So... so it'll be okay," he told Tony. 

"For you, maybe," Tony said. "What about me?"

"What about—" Bruce started, but Tony didn't wait for him to finish the question.

"If you're not there, who will I have?" he asked. "I'll have to start all over, and I'll be the youngest kid there and still one of the smartest, and people will hate me for that. They'll love me for my name, my money, but not... those aren't really _friends_. Those are sycophants, and I don't have any time for that. So if you're not there..."

"You'll make other friends," Bruce said. "Real ones."

Tony shook his head. "Not like you," he said. 

Bruce sighed. "Look. Nothing is definite yet, except that I got in. So let's not worry too much about what's going to happen until we know whether we need to worry. Let's just... let's just celebrate that I got in. Let's go somewhere, do something fun."

Tony looked ready to argue, but Bruce could almost see him making the decision not to. He mopped up the last of his tears with his sleeve. "Science museum?"

"Aren't you banned?"

"That was years ago!" Tony said. "I doubt they even remember."

Bruce wasn't so sure, but he wasn't going to argue. "Science museum it is."

**Author's Note:**

> For Jemma, who requested a conversation between Tony and Bruce after Bruce's suicide attempt. I'm not sure this is quite what you were looking for, but it's what they decided they were going to give me.


End file.
